Quilting Retreat is Relaxing, Productive

My quilting guild held its annual retreat this past weekend. It's about 36 hours of sewing, eating, laughter, and a little sleep. This year we went to Mercy Center in West St. Louis County and about 40 of us had a great time!


This year there were three short projects, called Optional Blocks, in addition to the main retreat project. Each of us also had the option of "doing our own thing" which is the option I chose. The first block above is my contribution to the first optional block contest on Friday night. All of the entered blocks are shown at left. One lucky guild member won them all to take home--and it wasn't me. I really liked these blocks and the technique was easy--no cutting out triangles and wrestling with bias edges. I might try to make a whole quilt this way myself some day...I have lots of scraps!

Saturday was sunny but cool, so most of us spent the day inside the auditorium room at the center. These photos are during the morning as people got ready to start on the main project.

Every one had a table mate which made it fun to get to know someone better. And yet you could see what everyone else was doing as well. Some people brought sewing machines that could do everything except make coffee. I brought my 1970 Singer Featherweight that has two stitches, but makes incredibly accurate 1/4-inch seams.

Some members brought individual projects. I can't show what I worked on yet, because it is going to be a surprise for someone who is expecting her first child soon. So I'll show what others worked on. This butterfly project was one of the most ambitious. Many parts that had to be sewn precisely. I admire someone who has the patience to do this!

The main project, taught by a guest instructor, was a pineapple block. At left is how she charted the various stages of construction for those who were doing the bock to refer to. Some did two or four blocks; one woman was doing 20! After I saw the results, I kind of wished I had made this project, but I also needed to finish some other work that I had started some time ago.



Beautiful batiks were popular, and these made a beautiful wall hanging after they were all assembled. I admire the color sense of my quilting friends, and wish I could do half as well.

A more tradi-tional color scheme was in progress in the photo at left. There is something timeless and perennial about the use of burgundy and green.

We sewed late into the afternoon and night, with a few breaks for stretches and in one case, general hilarity. Sarah, who looks so serious here, later went out and came back wearing a grass skirt and showing off her moves in a hula dance! The theme of the weekend was "Valley Girls Go to Hawaii."

More serious stitching from Lenore at left and Norma below. There was a constant hum of machines, broken by occasional music and laughter. After our last meal together on Sunday, people began to pack up and leave one by one. The weekend goes by so fast! I came home with a set of pinwheel optional blocks that I won in the last of the three drawings. I'll post a picture of them soon, along with my mystery baby quilt.

The Amaryllis Blooms for February

Earlier this week on Facebook I posted a photo of a single amaryllis blossom-- the first to come out on our gloomy, sleety Tuesday. Yesterday there were four blooms, although because of my camera angle, only three can be seen here.

The plant came from Norm's mother, who had one similar to this going all the way back to their days on the farm in Western Kansas. At least 60 years, maybe 70, by my reckoning. In the summer the pot containing it would go outside; I remember seeing it just outside the back door of their house in Colby, in the shade of the climbing rose trellis. The rest of the year it resided indoors and in the winter would send up multiple stalks, sometimes bearing 4 or 5 buds. The salmon color always struck me as unusual, because the potted amarylli you can buy in the winter in garden centers and hardware stores are usually red, rose, or white. Close to 40 years ago Mom gave me my very own bulb and over the years it has multiplied many times and I have shared it with myiad friends. I know that my sisters-in-law all have their own bulbs and we often compare notes to see whose plant is blooming first. Sometimes it has bloomed at Christmas, often in January around my birthday. This year this plant, the first of several I have, waited until Ground Hog Day. Another one is sending up a stalk that will bloom for Valentine's Day. Several others just seem to be waiting. I think they want to be repotted. It's hard for amarylli to be too crowded, but I think a actually have one pot that is. It's tricky because if you give them too much room between themselves and the side of the pot, they won't bloom at all. About an inch between the bulb and wall of the pot is the best.

This amaryllis is atypical in that all the leaves never die off at once, like most varieties do, and it never really goes into hibernation only to send up a flower in advance of new leaves. It sports shiny green leaves all year round, but when the oldest leaf starts to yellow, and then dry up, I start looking for the flower stalk. It is as though the leaf if dying and pouring all its nutrients into the flower. Two or three more leaves may do this as the flower emerges.

I have two other varieties of amaryllis. One is a gorgeous, fragrant rose and white beauty that a friend gave me years ago. It has only bloomed two years out of all the time I have had it. It probably needs something it isn't getting. Another is a creamy white/yellow variety that is very prolific...bulbs multiply like crazy and I have shared those, too. It is the kind that likes to lose all its leaves and sleep for a while in the winter before it blooms. I have some offshoots of it that have been asleep in their pots for over a year, so I'm not sure what will wake them up. Yet the bulbs are still firm so I know they are alive, in there, somewhere. A few years ago I had several of these creamy ones planted together in a plastic pot, and they expanded so much during the summer on the porch that they split it in two. Needless to say, that got my attention and I found two new pots and fresh potting soil to resettle them.

I believe the Latin name for our lovely salmon amaryllis is Hippeastrum striatum. I found a blooming specimen in the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden with this name years ago. I'm not a botanist but the plant had exactly the same size, color and habit as ours. It was in bloom with several leaves on, in late January, in a ground level bed in the Garden's famed geodesic-domed greenhouse. The plant is a native of Brazil. I have no clue as to how a flowering bulb native to Brazil could have wound up on a window sill in Western Kansas sometime in the 1940s or 50s, and if anyone has a theory, please let me know. One of the color slides from the farm days shows it blooming on a kitchen window sill, and Norm remembers it being there in his childhood. Like so many stories, it raises more questions that may never be answered. But this amaryllis is a lovely reminder of my dear mother-in-law, of the ties that bind generation to generation, and the fact that some plants will probably outlive us all.

Winter Wonderland I

On Thursday afternoon, the aftermath of Tuesday's Big Storm was still sparkling in the trees. A half day of sunshine, but the sparkles overhead refused to melt. We could relax inside, enjoy warm ham and bean soup and admire the show.

I love my 10x zoom lens and the additional digital zoom on my little Canon Power Shot. As the sun was getting ready to set, I stood on the front porch in the 18-degree air and took not only the photo above but this one of the neighbor's house across the street, bathed in the glow of sunset. This is the home of the lady who feeds all the stray cats in the neighborhood--and a couple of them were sleeping on our porch chairs until Ava and Norm scared them off.

Since I posted two earlier views of this same scene, I thought I should show what it looked like at 7 a.m. this morning after about 3 or 4 inches of NEW snow fell overnight. We caught the tail end of the storm that buried Dallas and Tulsa yesterday. This snow was light, and as soon as it stopped falling, the wind scattered a lot of it off the trees.

Our backyard is still very popular with the avian community. As I focused for this picture using the zoom out one of the back upstairs windows, there was a lovely bright red cardinal on the top curve of the shepherd's crook. By the time I could trip the shutter, he was on the ground, munching on sunflower seeds!

By 2 p.m. we had clear blue sky and 34 degrees, and with a little more help from Barb, most of the driveway is clear. Norm says it looks like someone took a snow blower to the front sidewalks. That would probably be Buddy, who has been known to go all the way around the two block circle, about 7/8 of a mile, clearing a path for walkers so they won't have to exercise in the street. Barb ran some errands and brought us a dozen eggs--the only food stuff we are running low on. Now we are good until the next arctic blast in the middle of next week. We are so blessed in this village with amazing neighbors!

Groundhog Day, Digging Out

Right here in the immediate St. Louis metro, the dreaded historic three-day ice, snow and wind storm was much milder than predicted, for which we are thankful and feel very fortunate. Predicting these weather events is very tricky, because when storms approach St. Louis they tend to veer one way or the other, or sometimes just part, go around, and regroup on the Illinois side of the river. Some locals are griping, as though they feel cheated we didn't get 500,000 power outages (as we did in 2006) or 14 to 20 inches of blowing snow--as did Tulsa and Columbia, respectively! Here are some pictures of our event. Above, the redbud in the front yard had about 1/10 inch of ice clinging to it as it started to get dark on Monday afternoon. It turned out that batch of freezing rain was only supposed to be the warmup for the Main Event on Tuesday.

The finch feeder toward the back of our yard wore a bonnet of icicles that I kept warily watching all afternoon as the freezing rain continued to fall. All the birds were feeding furiously Monday morning before the precipitation started. We rounded up the kerosene heater, the sterno stove, batteries, flashlights, matches, candles and long underwear in case the worst happened. The weather service at this point thought we could have 1/2 to 1 inch of ice by Tuesday night. We felt certain that if the ice reached 1/2 inch we would be in for an outage because somewhere a line would break, despite all the recent tree trimming by the utility company.

Our electric company learned some hard lessons from the two storms in 2006, one in summer, one in winter, that crippled St. Louis for days--and kept some people in the dark for a week or more. They trimmed a lot, buried some lines, upgraded poles (and raised our rates to cover the expense.) On Monday they had called in extra crews from some other states so they could be ready to respond as soon as things started to happen. At 4:30 p.m. on Monday, this is what the view from the back door across our neighbor's yard looked like. We fully expected that it would be a lot worse by morning, or at the latest, Tuesday evening.

The big surprise on Tuesday morning was that the view was much like the night before, our ice forecast had been canceled and we were now under a blizzard warning for heavy, blowing snow. I have never been so glad to be under a blizzard warning in my life. I knew that even if we did lose power, the response would probably be swift, and as the day wore on, we were less likely to. The photo at left is the same view as above, taken at 10 a.m. today (Wednesday.) We did get more ice--a total of about 2/10 inch, but what helped was the sleet that fell most of the day on Tuesday, with only a little freezing rain.

Even so, the ice could have been a problem if we had gotten 40 mph winds last night, but those didn't arrive, and neither did the 7-10 inches of snow. So I could actually appreciate the beauty in this view. As usual, our fickle weather changed course as it approached the metro. Go 20 miles south of I-255, and there is a lot of icing. Go 20 miles west on I-70 and last night the highway was closed at Wentzville all the way to Kansas City because of deep snow and whiteouts. Go 20 miles north, same thing. People are still digging out, although 70 opened this morning although it was still snowpacked. I imagine the many trucks that had to idle overnight at truck stops in St. Charles County took care of that as they rolled west.

The best thing about sleet is that it doesn't stick to tree limbs and power lines. The worst thing about sleet is that it packs itself very densely on the ground, streets, roads, and sidewalks. It looks like snow, until you try to shovel it. This morning, an ice pick would have been handy. This front walk is partly clear because all day yesterday, every time Norm took Ava out front for business, he moved the sleet along with a snow shovel before it could harden. The total depth was about three inches by this morning. It took a man from our church and two teenage helpers over 4 hours to chip out our driveway and our walks and steps--as well as Barb's.

Meanwhile, the juncos and other birds were keeping the back yard dining table filled. There are little tracks in the 1/2 inch or so of snow on top of the sleet. Yesterday they were having trouble standing upright, the footing was so slick for them.

Our street went untouched yesterday. The schools were all closed, even the University two blocks away. But early this morning the snow plow and salt truck started making passes and by 11 a.m. the sun had come out briefly and it was enough to finish melting the street down to its bare surface. Our driveway isn't perfect, but clear enough to navigate now.

After a busy morning of supervising the shoveling crew, Norm and Ava curled up for a well deserved nap after lunch. I can still hear our other neighbor's drive being scraped and shoveled outside the windows as I type. We will have a very cold night tonight but maybe not as cold as first forecast--they are saying 1 above instead of 5 below. It is supposed to stay cloudy and not clear, which will help. As if at that temperature, 6 degrees really matters!

We also will welcome Barb home tonight; she finally got a plane out of NY. In this storm, as in others, we have been reassured by the way neighbors along the street stay in contact and check on each other and offer help if needed. Patti up the street took Ava for a walk on Monday when the walks were slick. She also offered to let us sleep over if we lost power, since her furnace has a switch to let her run the fan off a generator, which she was ready to use if need be. Although we have a generator, it is of more use for warm weather outages, since our heating system is boiler and hot water radiators, and not easily converted to run on auxiliary power. We are going to look into getting a gas-log insert for our non-working fireplace. I'm also considering replacing our aging electric stove with a gas one. And we are definitely ordering some yak trax or other cleat slip-ons for our shoes so we won't be in terror (well, so I won't be--Norm is more sure on ice than I am) of slipping and falling if we need to leave the house the next time one of these storms hits. Since climate is changing and making storms in all seasons more severe (just take a look at what has happened in Australia this season) we probably should begin to expect these kinds of events as the new normal. Today we are thankful for warmth, food, light, good friends and neighbors and above all, the loan of a warm puppy.